is there a freeware basic compiler or visual basic program i can get

thanks

RapidQ

"mr_vocab" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> is there a freeware basic compiler or visual basic program i can get
>
> thanks
>
>

"mr_vocab" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> is there a freeware basic compiler or visual basic program i can get
>
> thanks
>
There are many out there, so it depends on what yo want to do.

For a VB like experience (Forms designer in IDE) you could use:
Rapid-Q (Reasonable easy to learn, no longer supported)
Envelop Basic (VB3 clone, no longer supported)
XBasic (very powerful, under current development, stable)
XBLite (very powerful, under current development, stable)

Then for others you could use like:
BCX (a basic to C translator, uses a C compiler to create final prog)

look at http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/basic.shtml

HK

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 20:41:26 +1000, mr_vocab wrote:

> is there a freeware basic compiler or visual basic program i can get
>
> thanks

http://www.doslife.com/
And follow the links around to find more stuff.
--
°¿° Maine SETI@home
http://www.earths-ocular.com
Registered Linux User: 347957

H-Man wrote:

> For a VB like experience (Forms designer in IDE) you could use:
> Rapid-Q (Reasonable easy to learn, no longer supported)

RapidQ IS supported in many ways, a mailing list with 1200+ members,
several projects going on to rewrite the old freeware compiler to make
it crossplatform and updated, lots of rewritten units and addons.
A memory leak in the old compiler fixed a year ago by addon units.

RapidQ has more users than any other freeware basic.
We just had a problem with the owner of the rapidq brand name, who
wanted some web sites to stop distributing rapidq, because he wants to
sell realbasic, but we fixed the problem. He did not have any legal
right to demand such a thing so he retreated to it being a "suggestion"
rather than a demand, and rapidq compiler can be freely distributed as
before.
So the future for the rapidq language looks good.

> Envelop Basic (VB3 clone, no longer supported)

Never heard of.

> XBasic (very powerful, under current development, stable)

Very few users, a lot harder to read than rapidq, clunky graphics
library.

> XBLite (very powerful, under current development, stable)

Never heard of.

> Then for others you could use like:
> BCX (a basic to C translator, uses a C compiler to create final prog)

There are also other translator projects going on, one which uses dot
net as platform for the rapidq language looks promising.

> look at http://www.thefreecountry.com/compilers/basic.shtml

A very nice basic is wxbasic, with crossplatform capability and nice
graphics unit in wxwidget. Easy to read code.
If I did not have rapidq wxbasic would be my first choice.
It is very young and undeveloped, but very easy to read and nice to use.

Rapidq has a lot more free to use example programs though, like a
thousand programs.
Wxbasic has 2-3 example programs.

A big RapidQ site with all updated software and an incredible amount of
example source code: http://g.yi.org/f.php?f=7306

To start using rapidq under windows go to this web page,
http://g.yi.org/f.php?f=7360 and download the file rqbeta.zip.

That is enough for a beginner to use. Later you can download the other
files on the same page and add them to the system.

A wxbasic site: http://wxbasic.sourceforge.net/


--
Roger J.

On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 13:12:32 -0400, dszady <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Thu, 8 Apr 2004 20:41:26 +1000, mr_vocab wrote:
>
>> is there a freeware basic compiler or visual basic program i can get
>>
>> thanks
>
>http://www.doslife.com/
>And follow the links around to find more stuff.

I will just add this resource, as well:
The QBasic Page
http://www.qbasic.com/qbindex.shtml

"Roger Johansson" <no-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:c5496l$2ola23$(E-Mail Removed)...
> H-Man wrote:
>
> > For a VB like experience (Forms designer in IDE) you could use:
> > Rapid-Q (Reasonable easy to learn, no longer supported)
>
> RapidQ IS supported in many ways, a mailing list with 1200+ members,
> several projects going on to rewrite the old freeware compiler to make
> it crossplatform and updated, lots of rewritten units and addons.
> A memory leak in the old compiler fixed a year ago by addon units.
>
> RapidQ has more users than any other freeware basic.


Laughable claim - based on what evidence? As of today, there have been
207,000 downloads of XBasic from the sourceforge download site alone, and
this is not even the main download site for XBasic. There were and are
another dozen places from which you can download XBasic, not to mention the
hundreds of thousands of downloads before XB was placed on sourceforge. I
would estimate that the total number of XB downloads would be near 2
million, but many of these are the same users downloading new versions, so
number of unique downloads might be 300 - 500,000.

To quickly gauge how many active users each has, just look at the size of
the yahoogroups mailing lists:

Rapidq : 1200
XBasic : 2400

Note that XBasic is open-source for Windows and Linux and has been since
1999. That means you can not only look at and recompile the source yourself,
you can add features, and even write your own version. This has already been
done - a version of XBasic optimised for Windows already exists - look here
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/xblite/ This has features which the original XB does
not - much smaller, allows inline assembly language, extra commands,
embedded Tcl/Tk, etc., etc.


Rapidq is not open-source, so fixing bugs, updating, etc. is difficult if
not impossible.




> > XBasic (very powerful, under current development, stable)
>
> Very few users,


Ha! (see above)


>a lot harder to read than rapidq,


XBasic is probably the easiest to read language there is, and ease of
understanding was actually a major design criterion for XB. XB is a modern
computer language, whereas RapidQ still uses the BASIC syntax of the early
1960's.




> clunky graphics library.

Ha again.





>
> > XBLite (very powerful, under current development, stable)
>
> Never heard of.




> > Then for others you could use like:
> > BCX (a basic to C translator, uses a C compiler to create final prog)



If you don't like XB, then BCX is an excellent second choice. Look here
http://bcx.basicguru.com/

BCX is Windows only, but has many advantages, the best being that it
compiles into C, which you can then compile again using a optimising C
compiler like Pelles C or LCC-Win32, both of which are freeware. XBasic (and
RapidQ) are x86/Pentium only, so will become obsolete in 10-15 years (!)
unless they are updated (XBasic2 is in development at present)


Vic

Vic Drastik wrote:

> Note that XBasic is open-source for Windows and Linux and has been since
> 1999. That means you can not only look at and recompile the source yourself,
> you can add features, and even write your own version. This has already been
> done - a version of XBasic optimised for Windows already exists - look here
> http://perso.wanadoo.fr/xblite/ This has features which the original XB does
> not - much smaller, allows inline assembly language, extra commands,
> embedded Tcl/Tk, etc., etc.

Please tell me where to find hundreds or even more examples of Xbasic
code, I could not find much when I looked for it.

This is an example of how easy rapidq code is. Anybody can understand
what this code does and what the result will look like.

What would the same look like in XBasic?

CREATE MainForm AS QFORM
CREATE MainMenu AS QMAINMENU
CREATE FileMenu AS QMENUITEM
Caption = "&File"
END CREATE
CREATE ColorMenu AS QMENUITEM
Caption = "&Color"
END CREATE
CREATE HelpMenu AS QMENUITEM
Caption = "&Help"
END CREATE
END CREATE
END CREATE

Why is the programming environment and all example programs in XBasis in
a middle-dark grey color, are there no other colors in XBasic?
Why cannot the XBasic editor use the normal windows colors which the
user of the computer has chosen?

I am not asking to create an argument, I would love to use XBasic if
somebody could tell me how to make it usable and could tell me where to
find good code examples for it.

Are there some good XBasic web sites? Url:s?


--
Roger J.

"Roger Johansson" <no-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:c57lsn$2prrp0$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Vic Drastik wrote:
>
> > Note that XBasic is open-source for Windows and Linux and has been since
> > 1999. That means you can not only look at and recompile the source
yourself,
> > you can add features, and even write your own version. This has already
been
> > done - a version of XBasic optimised for Windows already exists - look
here
> > http://perso.wanadoo.fr/xblite/ This has features which the original XB
does
> > not - much smaller, allows inline assembly language, extra commands,
> > embedded Tcl/Tk, etc., etc.
>
> Please tell me where to find hundreds or even more examples of Xbasic
> code, I could not find much when I looked for it.



I don't know which language RapidQ is written in, but XBasic is written in
XBasic, so the largest set of examples is the XBasic source itself. Here is
an example from the XB standard system library Xst -

FUNCTION XstDisplayConsole()
XstGetConsoleGrid(@grid)
IF grid <= 0 THEN RETURN
XuiSendMessage(grid, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
END FUNCTION
'
FUNCTION XstHideConsole()
XstGetConsoleGrid(@grid)
IF grid <= 0 THEN RETURN
XuiSendMessage(grid, #HideWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
END FUNCTION
'

This shows how readable XBasic is - first we call a system library function
to get the number of the console, which is just a display window, then check
if the console is valid. If not, do nothing and return. If valid, either
display or hide the console by passing a message. Simple. Thousands more
examples of XB functions available there. Also, see the demo directory that
comes with XBasic. Also see the XBasic mailing list on Yahoogroups and the
associated files stored there. Also see the examples on the xblite site
above. Also see the references on www.xbasic.org You cannot have looked
very hard if you failed to find these.





> Why is the programming environment and all example programs in XBasis in
> a middle-dark grey color, are there no other colors in XBasic?
> Why cannot the XBasic editor use the normal windows colors which the
> user of the computer has chosen?


You must be one of these people who chooses their car based on paint
colours, rather than reliability, safety, price or other factors. RapidQ is
certainly better-looking than XBasic, so I can see why you prefer it. This
question did come up a few years ago, and I think the answer was that XBasic
was written 17 years ago, and this is how programs looked then and no-one
can now be bothered spending the time to update the look, but it could be
done if necessary. Also, many XB users don't even use the IDE that comes
with XB - they configure their favourite editor for XBasic and use that as
their IDE. Or some even use XB with a commandline interface and don't bother
with GUI at all.



>
> I am not asking to create an argument, I would love to use XBasic if
> somebody could tell me how to make it usable and could tell me where to
> find good code examples for it.



XBasic is an ugly duckling, but it looks more like a swan the more you use
it. We recently had a quine competition and here is the winning program ( a
quine is a program that reproduces itself - that is, its output is an exact
copy of its source code). The following program is even better - a
self-checking quine. It not only is a quine, but it checks itself for
quineness, and only prints itself out if it confirms that it is a quine.


DECLARE FUNCTION Q()
FUNCTION Q() STRING
a="DECLARE FUNCTION Q() STRINGEND FUNCTIONquine0.x"
b="q=CHR$(34):n=CHR$(10):x=CHR$('=')+q:w=q+n"
c="A=CHR$('a')+x+a+w:B=CHR$('b')+x+b+w:C=CHR$('c')+x+c+w=CHR$('d')+x+d+w:E
=CHR$('e')+x+e+w"
d="y=MID$(a,1,20)+n+MID$(a,9,19)+n+A+B+C+D+E+b+n+c+n+d+n+e+n+MID$(a,28,12)+n
"
e="i&=OPEN(MID$(a,40),0):s=NULL$(LOF(i&)):READ [i&],s:CLOSE(i&):IF y==s THEN
PRINT y"
q=CHR$(34):n=CHR$(10):x=CHR$('=')+q:w=q+n
A=CHR$('a')+x+a+w:B=CHR$('b')+x+b+w:C=CHR$('c')+x+c+w=CHR$('d')+x+d+w:E=CH
R$('e')+x+e+w
y=MID$(a,1,20)+n+MID$(a,9,19)+n+A+B+C+D+E+b+n+c+n+d+n+e+n+MID$(a,28,12)+n
i&=OPEN(MID$(a,40),0):s=NULL$(LOF(i&)):READ [i&],s:CLOSE(i&):IF y==s THEN
PRINT y
END FUNCTION



I would be interested to see a quine written in RapidQ.




>
> Are there some good XBasic web sites? Url:s?
> Roger J.

See www.xbasic.org or google xbasic.

Vic

Vic Drastik wrote:

> > Please tell me where to find hundreds or even more examples of Xbasic
> > code, I could not find much when I looked for it.

> I don't know which language RapidQ is written in, but XBasic is written in
> XBasic, so the largest set of examples is the XBasic source itself. Here is
> an example from the XB standard system library Xst -

> FUNCTION XstDisplayConsole()
> XstGetConsoleGrid(@grid)
> IF grid <= 0 THEN RETURN
> XuiSendMessage(grid, #DisplayWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
> END FUNCTION
> '
> FUNCTION XstHideConsole()
> XstGetConsoleGrid(@grid)
> IF grid <= 0 THEN RETURN
> XuiSendMessage(grid, #HideWindow, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)
> END FUNCTION
> '
>
> This shows how readable XBasic is - first we call a system library function
> to get the number of the console, which is just a display window, then check
> if the console is valid. If not, do nothing and return. If valid, either

Neither the code or your explanation is in a language common people
could understand, or have any practical use for.

I want a programming language which is as close to normal english as
possible, and with as few technical terms as possible.

In rapidq we say; create a form, create a menu.
form.color green
etc..

There is no need to get a number of the console, or check that it is
valid, I cannot even understand what that means.

I think rapidq code is a lot easier to read.
Xbasic is close to C, if I recall rightly, which explains that the code
is more difficult than more classical basic dialects.

> display or hide the console by passing a message. Simple. Thousands more
> examples of XB functions available there. Also, see the demo directory that
> comes with XBasic. Also see the XBasic mailing list on Yahoogroups and the
> associated files stored there.

I have looked in the files area of the mailing list, and there are some
programs there. But it is nowhere near the number of example programs
which are available for rapidq.

Like, we have 20-30 text editors, a couple of web browsers, news and
mail programs, many different programming environments for rapidq,
several calculators, 10 different midi/mp3 players, 1-20 games, and many
other programs, in all probably a thousand programs.
The latest I saw was a program for controlling a web cam, for example.

And the example programs are very important for a beginner, he can try
many readymade pieces of code, change a little and recompile.
That is the best way to learn a language.

It is like learning to use a paint program by first learning to change
others pictures a little, then eventually you know the tools so well
that you can start creating paintings yourself.

> > Why is the programming environment and all example programs in XBasis in
> > a middle-dark grey color, are there no other colors in XBasic?
> > Why cannot the XBasic editor use the normal windows colors which the
> > user of the computer has chosen?

> You must be one of these people who chooses their car based on paint
> colours, rather than reliability, safety, price or other factors. RapidQ is
> certainly better-looking than XBasic, so I can see why you prefer it. This

I want reasonable colors and a proportional font to work with, and in
rapidq there is no problem to get a good environment to work in, even if
I do not use my own editor.
There are many new program editors and visual designer programs to
choose from.

> question did come up a few years ago, and I think the answer was that XBasic
> was written 17 years ago, and this is how programs looked then and no-one
> can now be bothered spending the time to update the look, but it could be

But why don't you rebuild it and fix such problems?
Why haven't you modernized XBasic in 17 years?
You have 2400 registered participators in the mailing list, but they
produce a lot less programs and documentation and new addons than the
1200 members in the rapidq list.

> XBasic is an ugly duckling, but it looks more like a swan the more you use

It obviously takes a lot of training to learn to use XBasic.
If somebody is prepared to put a lot of effort into a programming
language there are probably better and more modern platforms available.

But for the beginner who wants a simple freeware programming language
which he can use and produce normal looking windows programs after a
short introduction rapidq is a lot better than most alternatives.



--
Roger J.